Literature and History

Literature and history together offer one of the most complementary of all joint honours combinations, since both disciplines are concerned with understanding the past, but they approach it through different kinds of evidence and different questions. History asks what happened, why it happened, and what its consequences were, drawing on documents, records, and material traces to reconstruct and interpret the past. Literature examines the texts that people produced, asking how they made meaning, what they reveal about the cultures and values that shaped them, and how they have been read and understood across time.

Each discipline deepens and enriches the other.

At the University of East Anglia, which has an internationally recognised creative writing programme and a strong tradition in literary study, this three-year full-time programme gives you genuine breadth and depth in both disciplines. You will read literature across a range of periods and genres, developing the close reading and critical writing skills that literary study rewards, while also engaging with historical sources and methods, examining political, social, and cultural history across different periods and geographies. UEA's environment encourages the creative and critical dimensions of both subjects and brings a distinctive energy to their combination, valuing careful reading and precise argument in both the literary and the historical modes.

Graduates from literature and history programmes go on to careers in publishing, journalism, education, the civil service, heritage, archives, museums, arts organisations, and a wide range of professional roles where the ability to read carefully, think historically, and write with clarity is valued. Both disciplines develop transferable skills of evident professional worth. Further study is well supported, with many graduates pursuing postgraduate degrees in English, history, or cultural studies, and some moving into academic research or teaching.